Below is a list of the verbatim questions we asked Robert during the 38 minute interview (see Section 10). We have removed the recaps of Robert’s words and a few side comments. We have done this so that you can see the structure and pattern of our questions and gain insight into the Symbolic Modelling way of modelling.

The primary inspiration for this type of question comes from David Grove's Clean Language. You will find a number of introductory articles on our web site.

[Words inside quotation marks are Robert’s.]

So when you’re modelling then Robert, how do you know what’s ‘essential’?

Lets take an example, when you were modelling Martin what’s the first thing that you noticed that was ‘essential’?

So how did you know that was ‘essential’, then?

So when ‘it felt significant’, that ‘connecting at the heart level’, where did it feel ‘significant’?

‘The mid-line’. And what kind of ‘feeling’ is that ‘feeling in the mid-line’ when you had ‘an intuition’ that this was ‘essential’?

And is the ‘activation cue’, is that the same or different to the ‘accessing cue’?

So when you ‘accessed that center’ and you knew ‘you were onto something’ with Martin, what’s the first thing that you noticed at your ‘center’?

What kind of ‘energy’?

Kind of ‘like a radar’. So you notice that. And then what happens?

The ‘externalised humming’. And then there’s an ‘internalised ...’

So it’s both ‘marked’ and ‘connected to your center’. And when it’s ‘marked’, whereabouts — if we take that example of the ‘heart connection’ — whereabouts is that ‘marked’?

So you’re ‘pulling them out to see’ ... to see what?

So there’s a ‘testing of the resonance’ in the ‘backtracking’ process and a ‘pulling out’. You’ve got the ‘backtracking’, you’ve got the ‘feeling’, the ‘marking’ and the ‘external’ [points to Robert’s notes] as well. And ...?

And that ‘somatic significance’ from that ‘center’, where does that come from?

So the ‘activation’ and the ‘feeling’ and that’s what lets you know what’s ‘significant and essential’, another way of putting it is where does that knowing come from, or where does that ‘activation’ come from?

So when something ‘fits’, is that the same ... how you know that? Is that the same or different to the ‘resonance’ and the ‘feeling in the center’? That ‘significance’, is that the same or different to how you know something ‘fits’ and how you know it’s ‘significant’?

So last night or maybe this morning when you were deciding on what out of that [points to Robert’s notes] was going to go into the model, how did you know what was ‘essential’ or what was going to go in? How did you ‘select’ from that?

And so when you do that with Martin, you ‘imagine being in that paramilitary situation’, then what happens next, what do you then do with Martin? How do you use that?

So you’re doing that and then he’s still sitting here. So then what happens when you’ve done that ‘associating’ in that ‘context’?

And what lets you know you can do that in that ‘movie’?

And what kind of ‘feeling’ is that one?

So the ‘congruence’ is you can do it, and then what do you do?

So what do you do if you don’t get that ‘feeling’?

Or are there any ‘gaps’? *

And from the outside what it looks like is you ‘backtrack’ that ‘movie’ to Martin and ask him to answer a piece about it.

So let’s check out this one other piece which was about ‘selecting’ what was going to go into the model, which you did on your own. I don’t know if you want to take any particular piece. How did you know that you were going to ‘select’ that to go into the model? What let’s you know that that should go in?

Let’s take the model for example. You have to decide what word you’re going to put up on there [points to where Robert had displayed his slides]. Let me ask you, you said you knew those three pieces were going to go in. Did you know that before last night? Had you already decided that?

And the difference between the ‘individual’ and the ‘community’? You knew that ‘basic structure’ was going to go in, or not?

So when there was that ‘fit’ and the ‘fit’ is there [gestures to Robert’s space] that you were getting, is there a relationship between that ‘fit’ and the ‘movie you’ve created of you stepping in’?

So that ‘movie’ is ‘both associated and dissociated’. I’ve got the ‘associated’. What’s the ‘dissociated’ about the ‘movie’ then?

How do you do that Robert?

So when you just do that, where do you ‘watch’ it from – when you’re ‘dissociated’?

OK, so you take the two. And do you [switching gesture] between them? **

And when you get the ‘outcome’ and the ‘process’, is that from being a ‘member of the audience dissociated’?

And so, is that ‘knowing of a process’ the same or different as the ‘significant knowing in the center’?

Notes

Once the interview had started our questions and comments accounted for about 15% of the total words spoken and Robert’s were 85%.

* 'Essential' and 'gaps' were words Robert had used on the first day of the workshop.

** The nonverbal switching gesture was replicating the gesture Robert had used previously (see Clip 05 in Section 4). Even so this is a less-than-clean question because it provides an answer within the question.